


Even Death May Die

by reinkist



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Blogging, Compiled from Primary Sources, F/F, Family Loss, Fanfiction, Gaming, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internet Anthropology, Lovecraftian, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mystery, Online Romance, Reality Bending, Social Media
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-19
Updated: 2016-04-19
Packaged: 2018-06-03 02:48:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6593677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reinkist/pseuds/reinkist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I should, most likely, preface this with an explanation of my intent. I began my research without ever intending to do anything as serendipitous as uncover a mystery, in fact, I could never in my wildest fantasies have conceived of such a thing. Instead, it began solely as a personal project. A self-indulgent genealogical foray. An unadulterated exploration into my own heritage.</p><p>Let's cut to the chase: I discovered the net presence of my great-great-great-great grandfather."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sympathetic Threads

I should, most likely, preface this with an explanation of my intent. I began my research without ever intending to do anything as serendipitous as uncover a mystery, in fact, I could never in my wildest fantasies have conceived of such a thing. Instead, it began solely as a personal project. A self-indulgent genealogical foray. An unadulterated exploration into my own heritage.

Let's cut to the chase: I discovered the net presence of my great-great-great-great grandfather.

Research into such subjects became irresistible to me after the Historic Internet Act of 2181, when everything that still remained of the early net became accessible to scholars and hobbyists alike. Millions upon millions of terabytes of information, public and private, were suddenly laid out before me like a feast before a starving man. I didn't even realize that I'd been hungry.

I began by searching for my surname, which is fairly unusual. Strider. When I was a child I would wonder idly about it. Who might have borne it before me? How many stone cold badasses left their signatures on my genetic code? I never actually expected to find shit. So many servers have gone belly-up over the years, many of them collapsed under the weight of their own cascading internal errors. The amount of information remaining from the approximate years of 1995-2050 has been exponentially sliced. What's left, thank god, is still far more information than a single human could ever hope to parse. And within that unparsed expanse was the blog1 of my ancestor, Dave Strider.

His story is somewhat hilariously incomplete. Online platforms, especially in the early days of the net, seemed to fall out of public favor as quickly as they fell in. He stopped using this particular blog2 in the late 2020s, seemingly to transfer to a more in vogue platform, which my research tells me succumbed to widespread failure in 2048. I've been unable to trace him any farther than that.

Now, let's get back to the good shit.

Dave Strider was a writer, artist, musician, and net personality. He made a living throughout his twenties off ad revenue from his various projects, and accrued a downright implausible amount of fans. I don't know whether his success continued or fell flat. I can only hope for the former.

Now. I'm going to get personal for a moment. I've never been one to feel much of a connection to anyone, or anything. Acquaintances come and go, and people I could attach the word "friend" to have, fortunately or unfortunately, been few and far between. For the first time in my life I felt a connection the likes of which I never could have imagined. Is it the power of DNA at work? Or only the pathetic yearning of a lonely-ass dude from a hundred and seventy years in the future? Either way, I was completely enthralled, and, beginning with his very first post, I began to read.

Most of his life seemed relatively uneventful. He would primarily post things he'd created, make comments about day to day thoughts and events, and reflect on popular culture. His blog is also full of reblogs3 of other posts: various images and links that interested him. That type of content is irrelevant to my investigation, so I will not be including it here.

I will begin, instead, with the day tragedy struck.

* * *

turntechgodhead

sorry ive been basically mia

im kind of in the middle of this weird family thing sort of

i mean sort of in that its sort of a family thing and also that im sort of in the middle of it

ugh im completely vagueblogging right now i hate that shit

#if i post about this shit again ill tag it #rose #blacklist it whatever idc

* * *

turntechgodhead

so yeah im not going to be able to update the comic for a while and basically im cool with talking about why now i think

not cool exactly im pretty freaked out tbh

so i never talk about my family cause i dont really have a family

not anymore i mean

not gonna get into that but basically i havent talked to my sister in like

years

but yeah a week ago i got a call from this fucking detective in new york. she went missing and im the only relative of hers they can even track down and the police wanted to know if i knew anything. i dont obviously but they also needed someone to take responsibility for her like

effects

so ive been in new york for a couple of days and im going to be staying in her apartment now that they finally took the crime scene tape down and shit. they couldnt find anything to make them suspect " foul play " or whatever the fuck so now im going to be packing her shit up and I guess taking it with me b/c they need to start renting out this apartment again. but i dont even know where to start this is fucking horrible

i sort of fucked myself over because they offered to send people to help me but im kind of too fucked up emotionally right now to want any help. i just wanted to be alone for a while to work shit out. and now i feel like a complete shithead for feeling like complaining about how much work this is going to be when

theyre pretty sure shes dead i think and im pretty sure theyre just sparing my feelings by pretending she could still be out there somewhere. people like rose dont just take off and leave their apartments and responsibilities and fuckall

fuck you rose you act like youre so above everything but im always the one who has to come in and clean up your fucking messes. and yeah. your apartment is a fucking wreck. you fucking hypocrite

#rose #fuck fuck fuck

* * *

turntechgodhead

anonymous asked:  
  
hey r u ok?

yeah i guess dude

ive gotten a holy fuckton of asks and i dont have the ability to go through and answer all of them rn but if you sent me an ask i def saw it

and thanks

#anonymous #rose

* * *

turntechgodhead

ok ill elaborate

i don't know what the fuck is going on with rose. her apartment is a literal wreck. i know they messed shit up when they were searching it but fuck

let me paint you a picture here

its a really nice apartment, two bedrooms, huge windows, guard at the entrance, shit like that. i know it aint cheap to live in nyc so she must have been doing well for herself to be able to pay for this place. i dont even know what she fucking did or anything. i hate this

but anyway this apt

under the surface its really nice i can tell. the paint looks new. the floors are actual honest to god flawless hard wood. the faucets are all stainless steel. there are brand new kitchen appliances like one of those state of the art fucking fridges with a god damn electronic display on the ice maker and a microwave you could cram a whole turkey into shit like that

but

there is literal garbage everywhere. junk mail wrappers takeout boxes you name it just stacked on top of each other all over every surface

oh and cant forget the wine bottles

this woman must have drunk at least an entire bottle a day and im fucking horrified

they were all lined up around her desk about ten or fifteen deep with only enough room for her to like roll her chair back and get out. the ones on the inside were literally dusty. it must have taken hella skills not to knock those over like one of those crazy domino setups every time she had to piss. like when theyre all standing up it looks like an adult woman losing complete control of her life but when they all knock each other down in a beautiful spiral hey look its a hand giving the middle finger

i just took about six trips down to the dumpster completely loaded the fuck up with trash and then i sat down on her couch and just

i havent even started on the other rooms

fuck

#fuck #sorry #rose

* * *

turntechgodhead

so all the trash is gone now

i left anything that didnt obviously look like trash but the sad thing was that there really wasnt much to leave

not at all

it looks so empty in here now and im starting to feel like i made a mistake getting rid of all that shit

like maybe i just wiped the last of her personality right off the face of the planet

oh god

it doesnt even really look like anyone even lived here anymore

even her fridge is empty like there were a couple of mold cities in takeout boxes that i trashed but other than that there is literally only a bottle of ketchup and an unopened jar of like artisanal olives in the door and thats it. i dont think she used her kitchen whatsoever

the bathroom was another story holy fuck i dont even want to talk about that lets just move on

one bedroom has a really nice bed in it that tbh didnt look slept in at all. she either makes her bed every day like a fucking two time gold medalist in the bed making olympics or she always slept on the couch next to all the wine

im betting on the latter

the other bedroom just has a whole bunch of boxes stacked up along one wall like she didnt even unpack anything when she moved in. apparently shes been living here for almost a year so make of that what you will

but it looks like she only really lived out of the living room so who knows if she ever even came into these other rooms. all her clothes were in a big pile spilling out of this little laundry closet in the hall next to the bathroom. i couldnt tell which ones were even clean or dirty or what so i washed all of them

she doesnt have a dresser so i folded them all and put them on the floor of the box room

this is probably some kind of poetic justice b/c she used to do my laundry for me when we were kids cause id always forget and shed just throw my stuff in with hers and then dump it on my bed with this terrifying death glare

so good nice justice has been served i just spent half an hour folding my sisters lacey underthings

#rose

* * *

turntechgodhead

its the middle of the nihgt now its really fucking dark in here like what the fuck rose get some fucking lamps you gothy piece of shit

i shouldve kept my fuckign hotel room why would i chose to sleep here

it s so fucking inaproppriate considering but i am drunk asfuck srry

not on her booze though that would be fucking sick i got my own

what else am i suppose to do its hrrible here i feel lk shes still in here like ill look up suddenly and shell b at the door

glarign at me bein like i have my own shit life now get thefcuk out

alhcolholsm nd i r really happy we have three kids n a 401 k

i miss her so much how could i leave you alone lke this i dont want where i thi nk maybe you went to be actuallywhere you went please pleasepleaes

i m so sorry rose oh god

#rose

* * *

turntechgodhead

why would you reblog that seriously what. the fuck. is wrong with you

#i feel like such shit right now #jesus #fucking #christ #rose

* * *

 

  1. ^ "Blog," short for "web log," ca. 1999. A collection of personal comments, observations, and reflections, either short or long form, usually centered around a single topic or personality. 
  2. ^ The platform in question was Tumblr, a popular microblogging and social networking platform that was at the height of its popularity ca. 2009-2025, that allowed users to submit content of many different varieties.
  3. ^ "Reblog," a function of Tumblr. Original posts could be posted again to other blogs with added commentary, often forming multiple chains that followed the viral model of information distribution.




	2. Uncertain Authority

* * *

turntechgodhead

i feel a lot better now

im still

really fucked up over this but not like last night. lets just uh

forget that happened please

just

fuck

i went through her desk

there wasnt much there just office supplies pens and envelopes and a drawer of her bills and legal papers and shit

i looked through her papers and it looks like she's a writer. there are a bunch of memos and shit from what looked like a publisher. i googled it and yeah it is

so i guess she was pretty successful then

i couldnt figure out what she wrote. the publisher has a fuckton of books but i couldnt find any under her name. i have no fucking clue what name she would even write under though i mean

half of me thinks she would use some kind of esoteric ass alias but the other half thinks her ego couldnt take it

im gonna do more research and try to figure this shit out

the only drawer i didnt touch was the one the police had to force open cause it was locked

i guess im not ready to touch her super private stuff like locked drawers even if theyre not locked anymore

#rose

* * *

turntechgodhead

i went through all the boxes in the box room

there wasnt much there like most of it i actually remember from when we were younger

just a lot of random junk that i guess shes been toting around probably in these exact boxes for fuck knows how long

seriously random junk like ceramic animals and a jar of rocks i literally remember us collecting as little kids and notebooks from fifth grade pre algebra

fuck and her diaries from high school

i would have killed to read them then just absolutely killed

now the idea makes me fucking sick

#rose

* * *

turntechgodhead

why doesnt rose have any shit

she has four pieces of furniture clothes a computer and a bunch of random childhood crap in boxes

and like

one singular towel and some toiletries

no books no art no house plants no dishes not even any fucking silverware

maybe she only got money a year ago so she hasnt had time to get all that stuff

and then shit interfered

or maybe shes somewhere else

and this is just her trash house

rose pushes things as far as she possibly can to prove a point she always has

she might cultivate a trash house but live elsewhere for some mysterious rose reason

except if that was true the police would have found her by now probably

#rose

* * *

turntechgodhead

i talked to the landlady at roses apartment

she didnt really remember rose at all

the buildings pretty big so i guess she has a lot of tenants. all she knew was that rose always paid rent on time until last month and i think she was pissed at me for asking her so many questions. i guess she already told this shit to the police

also she can fuck right off

i was pretty fucking pissed after talking to her she didnt make it a secret what she thinks happened to rose and she started getting super pushy about me moving the rest of her shit out

everyone is such a fucking asshole in nyc jesus fucking christ

but i guess rose really could have gone missing anywhere between the first of last month and the first of this month so i guess i know that much now

#not that it fucking helps in any way what so fucking ever #rose

* * *

turntechgodhead

i rented a storage space for roses shit

theyre going to come move her furniture for me tomorrow and i bought some boxes to pack up her clothes and the shit from her desk

i guess i have to open that one drawer

even though i hate not respecting her privacy even if she is actually dead

if shes actually alive i dont know what i would say when i see her again like hey rose i snooped around in all your shit and now i know all your secrets how about that

and if shes dead maybe there are things she never wanted anyone to know and i should respect that wish

but also if shes dead she cant care anymore and i know now that i never knew her as well as i thought i did and i want to make up for it even though its way the fuck too little too late

i cant help it i feel like maybe if id just been

ugh

fuck fuck idk

#idk #rose

* * *

turntechgodhead

i need to just

type for a bit

i am hella uneasy

fuck thats not even close to describing my state of mind i have the full on creeps and im halfway tempted to just fucking

leave

go get a last minute hotel room and order pizza and raid the mini bar and sink slowly into oblivion to the strains of some third rate movie on starz or whatever

but that is so unnecessary because theres no fucking rational reason for me to be freaking out

i need to get a grip

ok so first of all i opened that drawer

i was just going to pack it up and not really look too close at anything but fuck man there are an absolute holy fuckton of papers in there in a huge messy ass pile all handwritten

just

edge to edge writing in ballpoint pen. just the tiniest most anal handwriting you could possibly imagine. and that drawer was fucking full of that shit

i mean i didnt really even read anything its just

the utter magnitude of it just like whacked me on the back of the knees with a broom handle and im still trying to pick myself up off the floor

and then i heard this little chime

i thought i imagined it at first but no man it did it again

definitely wasnt my phone cause my phone was in my pocket so i started looking around and after an amount of time the felt about five hundred times longer than it actually was i found this weird shelf sort of above the level of the doorframe in one of the closets

i dont think the police even saw it when they were searching i mean i didnt see it either until i literally heard a phone on top of it

and otherwise the closet is totally fucking empty

anyway i had to plunge my hand up there and I was fucking terrified about what i might accidentally touch but i pulled down this old ass flip phone and when i opened it it was dead and that just fucking

#my heart is still pounding like crazy #like jackhammers fucking to dubstep #i feel like im gonna throw up #rose

* * *

turntechgodhead

i mean it had to be that phone making that sound right

could it possibly have been a coincidence that i heard phone sounds and then happened to find some phone in some ridiculously obscure place i mean

what the fuck else could it have been

but has it seriously been sitting around up there for like a month and if so how the fuck did the battery last that long

maybe someone texted it multiple times and that finally took it over the edge

#rose #i dont even remember finding a cable to charge it when i was cleaning #if i did its long fucking gone now

* * *

turntechgodhead

anonymous asked:  
  
YOU SHOULD TELL THE POLICE ABOUT THE PHONE. THEY MIGHT BE ABLE TO TRACE SOME CALLS.

oh hey welcome back all caps anon long time no read

didnt you listen to serial they cant trace shit from phones all they can find out is vague stuff about cell towers

#anonymous #ok and #dude seriously take a word of advice from me and tone that shit down a notch #rose

* * *

turntechgodhead

anonymous asked:  
  
MY CAPS LOCK IS FUCKED UP, OK??

oh my god ok all caps anon this pretty much made my day

i just realized i havent laughed at anything in like a week

cant you like

hold down the shift key or something

#anonymous

* * *

turntechgodhead

anonymous asked:  
  
NO, I FUCKING CAN'T. 

holy shit lol

what did your keyboard get mauled by a bear

#anonymous

* * *

turntechgodhead

anonymous asked:  
  
YES. THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED. GOOD GOING. GOLD STAR. YOU NAILED IT.

dude come off anon weve had like five entire public conversations on here

im starting to feel like maybe you dont trust me

its breaking my heart man

and seriously

cant you buy a new keyboard i bet you could find one for like thirty nine cents at goodwill

#anonymous

* * *

turntechgodhead

anonymous asked:  
  
NO. I FUCKING CAN'T JUST BUY A NEW ONE, OK?? THAT'S NOT THE FUCKING PROBLEM. I'VE OBVIOUSLY WEIGHED EVERY SINGLE ONE OF MY OPTIONS, HERE. DO YOU THINK I ENJOY THIS? DO YOU THINK I GET MY ROCKS OFF FROM HAVING EVERYONE I EVER TALK TO ONLINE ASKING ME THESE SAME EXACT QUESTIONS OVER AND OVER?? BECAUSE NO. NO I DON'T. THIS ENTIRE SITUATION IS A NEVER ENDING FEEDBACK LOOP THAT REMINDS ME ENDLESSLY OF MY OWN TERRIBLE LIFE DECISIONS AND I'M FUCKING SICK OF RELIVING IT FOR THE BENEFIT OF YOU ASSHOLES

oh my god

holy fucking jesus look at this

my inbox and i are sharing a cigarette rn i am so serious

#anonymous #dude just fuckin #come off anon #what am i gonna do #follow you home

* * *

turntechgodhead

carcinogeneticist asked:  
  
FINE. I CAME OFF ANON. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW???

fuck yeah i am

whoa

holy fuck everyone follow this dudes blog right the fuck now

its complete wall to wall all caps meta analysis of 90s romcoms and absolutely nothing else

holy fuck dude message me

a/s/l??

#carcinogeneticist


	3. A Harder Battle

I should take a moment to furnish a little more backstory. The interactions I previously documented are indeed relevant to the story, mostly because, after this point, it's difficult to divorce the story of Dave Strider from that of Karkat Vantas.

There isn't much information left on the net about Vantas. I suspect that at some point he deleted his aforementioned blog, because I can find no evidence of it having existed outside of his interactions with Dave. He must not have had many followers, because even with a veritable army of macros at my disposal, I have never been able to find evidence of him on any _other_ blogs, either.

But that was on Tumblr.

* * *

FUCK THE CASTLE  
carcinogeneticist playing Fallout IV on Team Kill The Zodiac

https://hia.gov/transcription/twitch.tv/carcinogeneticist/v/10928828

... Jesus fucking christ. I am about to lose my fucking mind in this game. I can't fucking believe this. I thought living at the castle was going to be. Awesome. Fucking...Artillery. Artillery! And the whole thing was already wired up for lighting? I could build a whole god damned city in here and it would be the safest fucking city in the fucking commonwealth. Fuck diamond city! Live at the castle! Remember that mirelurk queen? It's fucking dead. I killed it. I will kill anything that sets foot within five yards of this place because just look at me. I am a fucking badass. The fucking badass to rule all badasses. But now I wish I hadn't even wasted all those missiles because that...that fucking...radio...tower...why the shitting hell can you hear it? Out loud? Why does it play the same fucking folky shit over and over and over and over and over and...holy fuck. Kill me. Please. Smash a fucking fiddle over my head, it's not like that would be different than what I already have to put up with. And if that wasn't bad enough, is anyone else getting sick as fuck of these like, ambient crafting noises? Why the shitting hell am I going to want to listen to nonstop hammering and drilling while I sit in this menu? Why is this a thing in so many god damned games? I'm leveling up my equipment. It takes a while! It's going to take a while. I'm making fucking important decisions here, and, also, npcs can just fucking walk up and say inane shit to you? I'm fucking busy, asshole. Does it look like I have time to listen to the exact same fucking sob story I've heard about five thousand fucking times from you? And fucking, dark souls, is almost as bad. As far as I can tell the timing of the hammering doesn't have any kind of logic behind it whatsoever, so the whole time in the back of my head I have this nagging dread about when it's going to happen again because whenever it does it's like there's this railroad spike being driven directly into my skull. I don't need this part of the game to be fucking immersive. I don't need to believe I'm literally screwing a scope onto a laser rifle. I just want a goddamn menu when I'm in a goddamn menu. Diablo and minecraft did it fine. It can make a noise when I actually do something. When I actually commit to something. That's it. Even if it's repetitive. Who cares! I shouldn't have to mute the fucking television to preserve the last remaining bloody chunks of my own shredded sanity! ...

* * *

Vantas was a moderately successful personality on Twitch1. He belonged to a team of other gamers that shared a channel, and would often compete against other teams, as well as with each other. His tendency to go on hyperbolic rants about small inconveniences in games netted him a fair amount of followers and a modest living, something which, if my interpretation of his personality is correct, never seemed to sit well with him. He didn't seem to know what to do with any measure of success.

* * *

**turntechgodhead**   
hey  
did you think i was joking or something  
re: messaging me  
  
**carcinogeneticist**   
WHY EXACTLY WOULD I THINK OTHERWISE  
  
**turntechgodhead**   
aw come on dude  
  
**carcinogeneticist**   
NO, I WILL NOT "COME ON."  
I HAVE FIFTEEN NEW FOLLOWERS SO FAR FROM THAT BULLSHIT  
YOU PULLED.  
I DON'T WANT YOUR FOLLOWERS FOLLOWING ME.  
I'M NOT HERE TO BE FUCKING MOCKED.  
  
**turntechgodhead**   
oh  
shit  
uh  
man im sorry i didnt really uh  
fuck  
  
**carcinogeneticist**   
I  
OH GOD  
FUCK I  
I KNOW YOU'RE GOING THROUGH A LOT OF  
TERRIBLE SHIT RIGHT NOW  
I SHOULDN'T'VE TAKEN THIS SHIT OUT ON YOU. FUCK. FUCK.  
  
**turntechgodhead**   
no man thanks for taking my mind off everything  
i kind of needed that actually  
and you didnt answer my question  
  
**carcinogeneticist**   
WHAT QUESTION  
  
**turntechgodhead**   
a/s/l?  
  
**carcinogeneticist**   
UGH SERIOUSLY  
FINE  
27\. MALE. BOSTON.  
  
**turntechgodhead**   
sweet thanks  
arent you gonna ask me back  
  
**carcinogeneticist**   
I ALREADY SORT OF  
UGH  
JESUS  
FINE  
ASL?  
  
**turntechgodhead**   
yesss  
29 male houston  
well currently nyc but yknow  
were you gonna say you already know that shit bc  
hmmm  
im still trying to get a read on why exactly you follow me i mean  
im getting the impression that youre not exactly the type that usually does bro  
so what gives  
  
**carcinogeneticist**   
I ASK MYSELF THAT QUESTION ON A DAILY BASIS.  
  
**turntechgodhead**   
my eyebrows are reaching world records of height  
my heart just did a breakbeat  
im becoming intrigued cg  
  
**carcinogeneticist**   
WELL STOP.  
  
**turntechgodhead**   
too late man

  1. ^ Twitch, a platform for members to stream themselves playing games, to which other members could subscribe and make monetary donations either out of generosity or in exchange for the successful completion of gaming feats.




End file.
